I am pleased to share with you the opening of PRECIOUS WASTE. A collection of 19 sustainable contemporary jewerly neck pieces from my class at Universidad Gestalt de Diseño.

June 3rd / 6PM in Xalapa, México.

I am very proud to share with you the launch of PRECIOUS WASTE an Online Exhibition containing all of my class projects. The physical exhibition will held a selection of 19 pieces from my teaching at Universidad Gestalt de Diseño but there are close to a 100 pieces that need to be seen and shared with the world!
Please help me share ! – Mariana Acosta

2013-2015. Five years ago I had to abandon my dream of staying in the US after graduating from my MFA, just like many other international art students and friends who had to leave during 2008 recession. Only the though ones remained, gloriously if I may say, they honor the opportunity they were given every day. What to do with a degree that is barely know in México – contemporary jewelry – often mistaken for traditional designers jewelry?

Well, I decided to teach. It’s been four years since I started this life project, and I call it that because for me, informing the new generations about contemporary jewelry is a life mission. I work with waste materials. Why? Because they were all I had left as working materials after graduating from a very prestigious but also pricey school. So I decided to make lemonade with the lemons I had, or as I named my toilet paper cardboard rolls jewelry series « When Life Gives you Shit, Use it as Fertilizer « . As a result, three years later, I am gathering the outcome of this project with a physical & virtual exhibition. Thank you everyone who has handed me an opportunity to make this happen. Special thanks to Universidad Gestalt de Diseño in Xalapa, Ver. Mx for fostering an opportunity for contemporary jewelry to flourish in México.

« Aug_Jan_2014/15 : This is my students work. The class goal was to make a piece of contemporary jewelry from waste materials that are considered useless outside the creative realm. A dialogue between the maker and the material is enabled through a process of profound research and experimentation. Understanding the possibilities of the material to be transformed into an out of the ordinary body ornament was central to the success of the work. I feel very proud that some of them were able to develop their own personal exchange with the material«

Alfredo Quesada – alumno at Universidad Gestalt de Diseño XalapaCan you guess the material from which this piece was made? Have you seen how Styrofoam sheets are made?

In México, brands of snacks like chips usually have this « tazos » inside their chip bags as a collectable item for years now. They usually depict cartoon characters. My student created this amazing piece which interestingly shines like it was made of precious stones due to the holographic prints in them. / Esta pieza esta hecha de « tazos » que por su naturaleza holográfica brillan como si fueran piedras preciosas.

21/02/2015

Georgina TREVIÑO , who has been selected for SCHMUCK 2015,is a contemporary jeweler from Tijuana, Mexico currently living in San Diego, California.
She obtained a Bachelors Degree in Applied Design with an emphasis in Jewelry Making from San Diego State University in 2014. Her work is a personal narrative and reflection of the nostalgic memories of unfinished architecture in Tijuana, Mexico. She incorporates industrial materiallocal to the framework of Tijuana infrastructure into jewelry that discusses the dichotomy between conventional building material straddling the United States and Mexico border.

Georgina Treviño (detail)

» My work captures the nostalgia of my childhood memories while living in Tijuana, Mexico. After being surrounded by cement walls during my childhood, I started to notice the differences between the way houses and buildings were being built when I moved to the United States. In Tijuana, structures, including family homes, are mostly made of cement. Sometimes they remain unfinished for years, even as additions to already completed structures. No two buildings looked the same and there were no designated communities where class was distinct based off the architecture. When I moved to the United States for college, I drove around neighborhoods, downtown, ventured into suburban and urban areas and I immediately noticed how different the architecture was from my hometown, which was only a short thirty-minute drive away. Buildings in the United States used wood as the framework and housing all looked the same. It was very clear to tell the areas of the city that were poor, wealthy and middle class, just based on the architecture. I focused on this dichotomy in this work and explored with the materials I remember as a child, incorporating them with modern materials that I am surrounded by now as an adult.

Georgina Trevino – Cement and brass neck-pieces

Georgina Trevino -Cement and steel necklace . 2014

These pieces investigate the inner structures of buildings and the process of casting cement while capturing geometric and organic shapes. These forms represent trapped memories; the geometric represent the hard walls of my childhood and the organic represent the hollowness that I see and feel now when I look back and try to hone in on those memories. The use of metal implies the half-way-done feel of rusting buildings. I cast cement using found objectsthat, to me, signify a culture that is distinctly young American. For example, to create a sense of tension, I cast inside latex gloves, condoms, and plastic shot glasses, which create a texture that aids the process of making with these materials. They elevate the meaning between my past and present. The cement forms themselves look heavy but are hollow and very lightweight. This is a direct reflection of the impression I had when I touched the hollow wood walls in the United States after living my entire life in the denseness of concrete. »

Today is The opening of my solo Exhibition ANATOMIA DEL PENSAMIENTO, this beautiful place is the old prision of San Luis Potosi, Mexico. And I got the site museum for my solo show.. Im very happy and excited, in this show you can see more than 180 pieces of my work - Jorge Manilla

«For some people violence is living proof that man is a savage… for other people it is the road to civility. Regardless of our understanding or appreciation of the subject, the only thing that we can be sure of is that violence is a part of our human nature and is motivated through raw emotions: fear, passion, jealousy, pain, sadness and even love are concepts that are buried within the reasons for violence. My objects are not merely materials and distorted shapes but rather dissected feelings, broken memories, and dry organs that reveal a naked soul and the fragility of our situation».

“For some people violence is living proof that man is a savage… for other people it is the road to civility. Regardless of our understanding or appreciation of the subject, the only thing that we can be sure of is that violence is a part of our human nature.

While researching for this project, I found that most of the time humans perceive, relate to each other and are motivated through their raw emotions. For example: fear, passion, jealousy, cowardice, pain, rancor, bad blood, sadness and even love are concepts that are buried within the reasons for violence. This range of diverse emotion, rational and irrational, are the reasons why violence became the source of inspiration for my work.

In my artistic research, I decided not to work literally with violence but with violent thoughts, feelings and memories. I explore In which moment we become a victim and in which moment we are the victimizers ? As a result, I have made troubled objects in non-attractive shapes with surprising and frightening images. I created the imperfect perfection, black images that mirror and reflect our imperfect reality. My materials create cataclysmic scenes, explosions that seem to melt the objects.

In the end my objects are no longer merely materials and distorted shapes but rather dissected feelings, broken memories, and dry organs that reveal a naked soul and the fragility of our situation”.